Monica Lewinsky: No #MeToo heroine

The #MeToo revolution against sexual abuse has a new unlikely heroine: Monica Lewinsky. The former White House intern, now a 44-year-old activist, has a new essay in Vanity Fair reexamining her past in light of the post-Harvey Weinstein reckoning.

The piece has been widely praised as a smart, necessary contribution to our national conversation about sex, power and consent. It is indeed a fascinating essay. But its main takeaway should be to raise more questions about whether #MeToo in its current version represents progress.

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Until now, Lewinsky has always insisted that her relationship with President Bill Clinton was fully consensual and mutual, despite the vast gap in their position and age — and despite efforts by Clinton foes to portray his actions toward her as predatory.

"To Lewinsky's credit, she never portrayed herself as any kind of victim of Clinton's advances," Jeffrey Toobin wrote in his 2000 book, "A Vast Conspiracy: The Real Story of the Sex Scandal That Nearly Brought Down a President."

In her first confessional piece for Vanity Fair in 2014, Lewinsky stuck to that position. She asserted that she felt abused in the aftermath of the affair, when special prosecutor Kenneth Starr strong-armed her into testifying while Clinton minions tried to smear her to protect the President. But the affair itself? "Sure, my boss took advantage of me, but I will always remain firm on this point: It was a consensual relationship."

Well, "always" didn't last long — only another four years.

"Now, at 44, I'm beginning . . . to consider the implications of the power differentials that were so vast between a President and a White House intern," Lewinsky writes, concluding that "in such a circumstance the idea of consent might well be rendered moot." She allows that what happened between her and Clinton was not sexual assault, but she believes it was "a gross abuse of power."

While stating that it's "very, very complicated," Lewinsky offers a parenthetical disclaimer that "none of the above excuses me for my responsibility for what happened." That's one brief mention of responsibility after several paragraphs of downplaying it.

Lewinsky also asserts that her earlier denials of victimhood were a self-deluded way of dealing with trauma and reclaiming her dignity.

Yet Lewinsky's new claims ring hollow to those of us who remember the details of that sordid saga. It was always clear that the 22-year-old intern, not the 49-year-old President, initiated the affair in 1995 (first by lifting her jacket to flash the top of her thong underwear when they were briefly alone in an office, then by seductively whispering that she had a crush on him).

Monica Lewinsky is seen hugging President Clinton as he greeted well-wishers at a White House lawn party in Washington on Nov. 6, 1996. (AP)

Later, Lewinsky was the one who pushed for more intimacy, complaining to her confidants about her lover's reluctance to have sexual intercourse.

Needless to say, Lewinsky's pursuit doesn't absolve Clinton, a much older married man in a position of far greater responsibility. It was his choice to respond to her sexual overtures. His actions were immoral, reckless and damaging. He certainly should have known better.

Yet to say that the power dynamic negates consent is absurd. There was no point at which saying no could have put Lewinsky's career or livelihood in jeopardy.

However young, she was a college-educated, sexually experienced grownup. There are situations in which one can argue that an adult who initiates sex with another cannot give meaningful consent — for instance, if he or she is being held prisoner. But this was not such a situation.

People rethink their pasts all the time. But Lewinsky stresses that she probably would not have had her epiphany without #MeToo — not only because of the heightened awareness of sexual coercion, but because of the support and solidarity the movement offers: "Virtually anyone can share her or his #MeToo story and be instantly welcomed into a tribe."

It's a revealing statement, and not in a good way: It brands #MeToo as victimhood-based tribalism for women. What began as a protest against abuse of power to coerce sex and silence victims has become an invitation to reframe regretted sexual experiences as coercive. Lewinsky's self-reinvention as a victim completes this descent.

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At one point, Lewinsky notes that in the presumably benighted late 1990s, "owning" one's sexuality was treated as a marker of female agency. Have we come a long way since then, or are we going backward?